


Persuasion

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drowning, Gen, Hurt / Comfort, Hurt Castiel, Protective Castiel, Tortured Castiel, Winchesters (Supernatural) to the Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 15:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15998051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A powerful creature is stalking the Winchesters, so Cas masks them and sends them into hiding until he can find out what it is and how to kill it.Unfortunately, it finds him first, and it knows how to bind an angel's Grace.Essentially human, Cas must endure the creature's attempts to find out where the brothers are for as long as he can to give them more time to get away.Dean and Sam...  Well, they have other ideas.





	Persuasion

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt at the meme.

Dean isn’t happy about it. It takes a long time to persuade him, long into the evening, and, finally, Sam weighs in that nobody wants to be in this situation.

But they are, and Cas’s plan is the only one that makes sense.

So Cas touches them, and this time the markings he etches quickly into their ribs are for hiding from something other than angels.

It will keep them safe long enough for Cas to find the creature that hunts them, and deal with it.

Or so he thinks.

++

Twelve hours after the brothers leave the bunker, Cas is sitting cross legged on the library floor, towers of books stacked around him. There are tomes here older than the combined lifetimes of every human he knows now or has done in the past, and in one of them, surely, he’ll find a way to lure in and kill whatever it is that wants his humans dead.

When he hears the knock, he marks his place and puts the book aside, and gets up. 

It’s possible the brothers have returned, but Cas doubts it. He’d told them to put distance between them and the bunker, to leave no trail. Even he doesn’t know where they’re going, just in case, and when he opens the door he realises that was a sound precaution.

It’s standing there, grinning, and he can see through the human mask it wears to its true nature. 

Now he knows what it is, but that’s of little use to him as a bolt of energy slams into his chest and throws him against the wall.

He can do nothing but slump to the floor as it steps inside, and closes the door behind it.

“I hope you’re not home all alone, angel,” it says. “I’ve come such a way and that would be so disappointing.”

++

They have names in Greek, and Sanskrit and Gaelic, and a hundred stories about the horror they’ve wreaked on those unfortunate enough to encounter them.

But it’s been millennia since Cas had even heard their name, and so he, not unreasonably, had believed them extinct.

Trust his humans to catch the interest of possibly one of the remaining few to be alive. And trust him to be caught off his guard.

But at least he’d sent them away.

He coughs, throat and lungs spasming, as it lets him up, holding him above the water long enough for him to catch his breath.

The cuffs around his wrists add to his vulnerability, but since it has his Grace bound, there’s little he could do even without being so restrained.

“All you have to do, Castiel, is tell me where they are. Have you hidden them, hmm? Are they in a wardrobe, or under a bed? Are they in town, staying in a motel or in the back seat of that car of theirs? Or have you sent them further? Just tell me, and this will stop.”

Castiel meets its faux-friendly gaze with one of defiance. The longer he can keep it here, toying with him, the further away the brothers can get.

Of course, since he is essentially human, if it toys with him too hard or too long…

“I don’t know,” he says, and hopes it interprets the truth as a lie.

“And I don’t believe you,” it says, and then he’s pushed under the water once more.

++

He wakes up on the cold bathroom floor, in a pool of water and what he suspects is his own vomit. He’s shaking, hard, and he can’t remember if that’s a good sign or not.

But either way, if he’s alone, then he should try to get up, and find a weapon since he can’t summon his blade while he’s cut off from his Grace.

But he’s not alone, and he hears it chuckle when it realises he’s awake.

He manages to roll over and sees that it’s filling the bath again.

“You threw up in the water,” it tells him. “Made quite the mess, and I do have standards, Castiel. It’s taking a while to fill. You should use the time to think carefully about how wise it is of you to keep lying to me.”

Now Cas knows what it is, he also knows how to kill it. Nothing fancy: a hard enough blow to the skull, in the right place, will do the job. He wishes there was a way to tell the brothers though.

Eventually, this thing will find them, or they’ll wonder why he hasn’t been in touch and come looking for him. It probably thinks that too, and it might just wait here for them to do just that.

Or for someone else to come by, Mary or even Jody and Claire, and the thought of Claire enduring this torment...

He lurches to his feet, finding strength from somewhere, and seizes at the first thing he finds.

It’s a bottle of Dean’s aftershave, hardly sturdy enough to do the job, but it’s all he has, and Cas smashes it down as hard as he can.

He draws blood, and it screeches at him, reaching up to where a large gash has split its scalp.

So close, but not close enough.

It lashes out, knocking the bottle from Cas's hands, and then it just scoops him up and drops him into the bath.

His head collides with the edge, and then he’s under the water, and it’s holding him there. His struggles are ineffectual; his thrashing sends surges of water over it and over the sides, but still it holds on.

And then, just when Cas thinks he’ll die like this, it hauls him up enough so that he can breathe.

“The last chance, Castiel. The very last chance. Where are they?”

Castiel keeps his gaze on it, even as his lungs struggle to pull in air.

“Alright,” he gasps. He coughs, and it hurts. “I’ll tell you.”

It grins down at him, pets his face as if rewarding him. “Good angel. I wish you’d been this smart to begin with, and none of this unpleasantness would have been necessary. So, where are those two humans of yours?”

Its answer comes sharp and sudden, the blunt crack of bone caving in before it falls dead to the floor.

Dean grabs hold of him before he can fall back into the water, and then pulls him upright.

“Dammit, Cas,” he says, but there’s that tone of fond irritation in his voice.

Cas watches as Sam puts down the statue he recognises as being part of a set from the library. One that neither of the brothers had especially liked, but felt tradition demand they leave in place.

It’s broken, now, and Sam drops it with a thud.

“You okay?” 

Cas nods, and then Sam reaches in to help haul him out of the bathtub and set him on his feet.

“I will be, as soon as my Grace is freed.”

Dean glares down at the thing they just killed, then starts work on the cuffs around the angel’s wrists.

“Okay, then let’s do that. You’re freezing, Cas. Come on.”

The cuffs fall to the floor, and Dean leads him out.

++

It just takes time, time without being drowned or manhandled, or in the creature's presence, for Cas to recover.

He still accepts the change of clothes from Sam, because there’s something comforting in it, and sits in the war room with them to explain what happened.

And they have a story to tell also, of how they ran into the person who’d sent this thing after them.

He was impatient, and wanted to see them both slaughtered, but his eagerness for it got him caught by them.

Neither brother knows why, and Dean couldn’t persuade the knowledge out of him, though he did learn it was on the way to the bunker, and he did learn how to kill it.

“When you stopped answering your phone,” Sam says, “we figured it had already got here and you were in trouble.”

“You shouldn’t have come back,” Cas says. “Especially if you thought it was here. It could have killed you both.”

“It didn’t,” Dean says.

“But it could have.” Cas feels as if, despite being around these two for all these years, and knowing how to speak every language in existence, there is still, somehow, a failure to communicate.

“No way,” Dean says, “were we leaving you here with it to get tortured and killed. Just like you wouldn’t have left us with it if things were the other way around. You know we wouldn’t, Cas. You’re just gonna have to accept that if you’re in trouble, we will come for you.”

“Always,” Sam says, “no matter what it is.”

He pushes a mug of coffee towards the angel, and Cas welcomes the warmth seeping through it into his hands, Grace restored or not.

“I know,” he says. _Always_.


End file.
